He turned from the window. He had no more duties to do, nothing now to engage him except to wait for the lottery of the day. So, on this day of sunshine and battle, Ducos slept.
The Marquess of Wellington, Generalissimo of the Allied army in Spain, looked at his watch. It showed twelve minutes past eight. ‘We shall dine at the usual hour this night, gentlemen.’
His aides smiled, not sure if he was joking. They had come with him to the lower slopes of the western hills and could see, two miles to the east, the dark line of the French guns.
The General looked to his right where the Great Road
came from a defile and he watched, on the river’s far bank, a column of infantry begin climbing the slopes of the Puebla Heights. The column was led by Spanish troops, who would, this day, have the honour of first engaging the enemy. He snapped the watch shut. ‘Gentlemen.’ His tone was distant, almost sour. ‘I wish you all joy of the day.’
The battle of Vitoria had begun.
Chapter 20
The guns, the great French guns, the guns that were the Emperor’s love and the weapons most feared by France’s enemies, fired.
The sound died and the smoke drifted.
The French had shot at no target. They had merely warmed the barrels and watched the fall of the roundshot in the killing ground. As yet the battle had no pattern. Some Spanish troops clawed their way up the Puebla Heights and fought the French skirmishers on the steep slope, but no infantry and cavalry had appeared on the plain to become meat for the gunners who now had the range perfectly judged. The smoke from the cannons drifted southwards, dissipating in the small breeze. The ladies who sat on the tiers of seats built by the French Engineers on Vitoria’s wall felt faintly disappointed that the sound had stopped.
La Marquesa climbed to the topmost tier. She smiled at the wife of a cavalry Colonel, knowing that the woman eagerly spread gossip about her. ‘Your husband’s piles are better, dear Jeanette? Or is he riding to battle in a cart again?’ She did not wait for an answer, but climbed on upwards then waited as her maid spread cushions on the bench. She felt in her reticule for some coins and nodded towards one of the pastry sellers. ‘I want some of the lemon pastries.’
‘My Lady.’
She sat. She carried a small ivory spyglass. There was little to be seen on the plain. The killing ground was hidden from her beyond the Arinez Hill. On a lower ridge that was closer to the city she could see troops drawn up in close order. Over their heads floated the great purple and white banner that told her they were King Joseph’s household guards.
She wondered where General Verigny was. He had left her eagerly, exhilarated at the thought of battle. With victory this day, he assured her, Pierre Ducos would be defeated. Joseph would keep the Spanish throne and La Marquesa’s wagons could be taken from the Inquisitor. Helene had smiled at her lover. ‘And what if we lose today?’
‘Lose? We can’t lose!’
Just days before, she reflected, the French army had expected nothing but retreat and the abandonment of Spain. Suddenly, with a volatility brought by news of Napoleon’s victories, the army was replete with confidence. Today, they were sure, they would revenge themselves on Wellington.
It was all so unexpected. At Burgos she had tried to persuade Richard Sharpe to betray his honour in order to defeat Ducos’ scheming. She wondered whether Sharpe would have signed the parole, then dismissed the thought because he was dead and the question was irrelevant. Instead King Joseph was fighting for his throne and victory today would mean an end of bribing Spaniards for favours. France would crush Spain again. The world would watch an Empire rear back to greatness.
A Captain, in the green and pink uniform of General Verigny’s regiment, appeared at the bottom of the steps. He had one arm in a sling, and one eye’bandaged. He limped. He could not fight this day and he had been ordered to attend on La Marquesa instead. It was typical of General Verigny, La Marquesa thought, to make sure that her escort was of an unbelievable ugliness. She raised her fan, caught his eye, and smiled as he joined her. ‘You’re looking for me, Captain?’
‘Are not we all, my dear lady?’ He bowed over her hand, kissed the gloved fingers, and smiled. ‘Captain Saumier, at your obedient service.’
He really was extraordinarily ugly, with a face like a grumpy toad. ‘Do sit down, Captain. You must be desolated not to be fighting today?’
‘There’ll be other days, my Lady, but this one is yours, flow can a man regret such a thing?’
‘So prettily said. A lemon pastry?’
She sent the maid for more, and ordered wine to be brought from her coach. ‘How did you fetch your wounds, Captain?’
‘Falling from the balcony of a lady. Her husband objected.’
No doubt, La Marquesa thought, at his wife’s egregious taste. She waved her fan at the battlefield. ‘You must tell me what is happening, Captain.’
She could see the small clouds of musket smoke on the Puebla Heights. Captain Saumier borrowed her glass, stared through it for a few seconds, and delivered himself of the opinion that Wellington was attacking on the Heights because he dared not attack on the .plain.
‘But if they take the hills,’ she paused as her maid brought her the fresh pastries and wine, ‘won’t they have to come down to the plain?’
‘Oh indeed, my Lady. How very true!’
‘And what happens then?’
‘We beat them with the guns.’ Saumier grinned, showing long, yellow teeth.
‘As simple as that?’
Saumier smiled. ‘War is simple.’
‘No wonder men like it so much.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps Wellington will do something you don’t expect?’
Captain Saumier shook his head. He subscribed to the view commonly held in the French army, a view he stated now with manly certainty to reassure this nervous, beautiful, wide-eyed woman. ‘Wellington can’t attack. He puts up a reasonable defence, my Lady, but he can’t attack.’
‘You were at Assaye?’
‘Assaye?’
She did not enlighten him. ‘Argaum?’
He shrugged.
She smiled. ‘Salamanca?’
Saumier smiled. ‘These are most excellent pastries, my Lady.’
‘I’m so glad you like them, and I’m so looking forward to your enlightenment today, Captain. It’s so rare to watch a battle with a guide beside one.’
Saumier had been told by his General that the Marquesa was intelligent and well informed. He rather feared that he would be enlightened this day. ‘You’re comfortable, my Lady?’
‘Eminently.’ She turned from him and trained the glass on the Puebla Heights. She could see nothing of interest. The battle was being fought below the skyline. She hoped, she hoped passionately, for a French victory this day, or else the wealth that she had accumulated so carefully and with such good planning would be lost. She remembered her lover’s certainty, and took heart that Captain Saumier was also so replete with assurance. It seemed that the French army were sure of their coming triumph. No one had ever beaten Wellington in battle, but neither had Wellington ever fought an army commanded by Marshal Jourdan. She ate her pastry, accepted a glass of wine, and hoped for victory.
Her hope that was devoutly shared this day by Don Jose, by the grace of God, King of Castile, of Aragon, of the Two Sicilies, of Jerusalem, of Navarre, of Granada, of Toledo, of Valencia, of Galicia, of Majorca, of Minorca, of Seville, of Sardinia, of Corsica, of Cordoba, of Murcia, of Santiago, of the Algarves, of Algeciras, of Gibraltar, of the Canary Islands, of the East and West Indies, of the Ocean Islands; Archduke of Austria; Duke of Burgundy, of Brabant and of Milan; Count of Hapsburg, Tyrol and Barcelona; Sire of Biscay and of Molina. The titles were ones he had given to himself. His younger brother, who was the Emperor of France, merely called him Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain and the Indies.
If he lost today’s battle he would be king of nothing.
Which was why, as the sun rose higher and the guns waited, Josep
h Bonaparte was troubled by the evident success that Wellington’s troops were having on the Puebla Heights. He expressed his concern to his military commander, Marshal Jourdan, who merely smiled. ‘Let the British have the Heights, sir.’
‘Let them?’ King Joseph, a kindly, anxious man, looked worriedly at his military commander.
Jourdan’s horse was restless. The Marshal calmed.it. ‘They want the Heights, sir, so they can march safely through the defile beneath. And that’s where I want them.’ If the British came from the defile where the river left the plain then they would be marching towards his great guns. He smiled at Joseph. ‘If they come from the west, sir, they’re beaten.’
Jourdan hoped to God he was right. He had planned on a British attack from the west and when the cannons had smeared the killing ground with British dead he would release the cavalry to become the first of France’s Marshals to defeat Wellington. He did not care about the Heights. No man there could influence the battle on the plain. The British could take every damned hill in Spain so long as they marched into his guns afterwards. He could almost taste the victory.
There was only one place that worried Marshal Jourdan, and that was the flat land north of the river. If Wellington did not attack from the west, but instead tried to outflank the plain by marching about the French right, then Jourdan would have to turn his battle-line and resite his guns.
He looked anxiously northwards, to the land across the river where the wind stirred the crops in long, pale, rippling waves. Two marsh harriers flew above the trout-rich Zadorra, gliding out of sight behind the hill that hid the river’s bend. He had not fortified that hill. He wondered if Napoleon would have put men there. No. No. He must not have doubts! He must behave as if he knew exactly what would happen, as if he was controlling the enemy as well as his own army.
He made himself smile. He made himself look confident. He complimented the King on his tailor and tried not to think of British troops coming from the north. Let them come from the west! Pray God, from the west!
‘Sir!’
‘Sir!’
A chorus of voices sounded. Fingers pointed west towards the defile that was still deep shadow.
‘Sir!’
‘I see it!’ Jourdan spurred forwards.
From the defile, marching towards the small village that lay before the Arinez Hill, marching onto the great killing ground dominated by the French guns, were British infantry.
Their Colours were flying. They marched like parade soldiers towards their deaths.
‘We’ve got him! We’ve got him, by God!’ Jourdan slapped his thigh.
So Wellington was not being clever. He was coming straight on and that was what Jourdan wanted. Straight on to death and glory to the Emperor! He spurred his horse forward, waving his plumed hat at the artillerymen. ‘Gunners! Wait!’
The linstocks were lit. In each of the great guns, more than a hundred of them, the priming tubes had pierced the powder bags and waited for the fire.
King Joseph rode alongside his Marshal. Joseph was terrified of his younger brother’s displeasure, and the terror showed on his face. If he lost this battle he would be a king no more, and to win it he had to see Wellington beaten. Joseph had witnessed the British army fight at Talavera and he had seen how their infantry had snatched victory from certain defeat.
But Marshal Jourdan had seen more. He had fought as a private in the French army that went to help the American Revolutionaries. He had seen the British defeated, and he knew he would see it again. He beamed at the King, the Emperor’s brother. ‘You have a victory, sir. You have a victory!’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Look!’ He waved his hand at the empty north, then to the troops that spread out before his guns. ‘You have a victory!’
It was the last moment that men could look at the field and see what happened, the last moment before the smoke of the guns hid the struggle. Jourdan drew his sabre, the steel bright as the sun, and swept it down.
The guns began.
The defile where the Great Road
entered Vitoria’s plain was crowded. Troops waited to be ordered forward. Wounded, from the Heights of Puebla, had been brought to the road. Surgeons, their aprons already gleaming red, tried to work their saws and blades as men crowded the narrow verges waiting to go towards the gunfire that had suddenly started.
Men joked fabout the sound of the French guns. They joked because they feared them.
Young drummer boys, their voices unbroken, watched the veterans and tried to take comfort from their calmness. Young officers, sitting on expensive horses, wondered whether glory was worth this nervousness. Staff officers, their horses’ flanks already white with sweat, galloped along the columns looking for Generals and Colonels. The Colours, untouched in the defile by any wind, hung heavy on staffs. The first Battalions were already on the plain. The first wounded were already dragging themselves back towards the surgeons.
Men broke from the ranks to go down to the river and fill their canteens with water. Some had prudently saved their ration of wine or rum. It was better, they said, to go into battle with alcohol inside.
An Irish regiment, their red coats faded and patched to show their long service in Spain, knelt to a chaplain of a Spanish regiment who blessed them, made the sign of the cross above them, while their women prayed anxiously behind. Their Colonel, a Scottish Presbyterian, sat in his saddle and read the twenty-third psalm.
Some Highland troops were climbing the Puebla Heights, going to take over from the Spaniards. The sound of the pipes, wild as madness, came to the defile mixed with the roar of the French guns.
Men asked each other what was happening, and no one knew. They waited, feeling the warmth coming into the day, and they listened to the battle sound and prayed that they would live to hear the sound of victory. They prayed to be spared the surgeons.
At the rear of the column, where the women and children waited for the day’s lottery of widowhood to be drawn, and where the local villagers stared wide-eyed at the strange, huge tribe that was packed into their valley, two horsemen reined in. One of the two men, a tall, dark-haired, scarred man shouted at a group of soldiers’ women who sat at the river’s edge. ‘Which Division is this?’
A woman who was suckling a baby looked up at the Rifleman who had shouted the question. ‘Second.’
‘Where’s the Fifth?’
‘Christ knows.’
Which answer, Sharpe reflected, he deserved. He spurred Carbine forward. ‘Lieutenant! Lieutenant!’
A Lieutenant of infantry turned. He saw a tall, suntanned man on a horse. The man wore a tattered uniform of the 95th Rifles. At his hip was a sword, which seemed to suggest that the unshaven man was an officer. ‘Sir?’ The Lieutenant sounded tentative.
‘Where’s Wellington?’
‘I think he’s over the river.’
‘Fifth Division?’
‘On the left, sir. I think.’
‘Are you the right?’
‘I think so, sir.’ The Lieutenant sounded dubious.
Sharpe turned his horse. The defile was jammed with men and he could hear the sound of guns that told him this road led only to the battlefield.
He did not care about Wellington. Now was not the time to find the General and speak of the treaty that La Marquesa had betrayed to him in Burgos. He had written down everything that she had told him, and he would make sure that the letter reached Hogan: But now Sharpe had caught up with the army on a day of battle, he was a soldier, and vindicating his name could wait until the fighting was done. He looked at Angel, mounted on^an ugly horse that they had stolen in Pancorvo. ‘Come on!’
He led the boy back to the village where a bridge crossed to the western bank. He would find the South Essex, he would come back from the dead, and he would fight.
Chapter 21
The French guns fired all morning. Their sound rattled the windows in the city. It was like a thunder that had no ending.
The smo
ke grew like a cloud. The women who sat on the tiers of seats above the city wall grumbled because their view was obscured. They could not see the enemy. They could only see the great cloud that grew and spread and drifted southwards with the breeze. Some of them strolled on the ramparts, flirting with the officers of the town guard. Others, their parasols raised against the sun, dozed on the benches.
The gunners fired, aimed and fired again. They dragged the guns forward after each shot, levered the trails round with handspikes, and pushed the ammunition into the hot muzzles that steamed from the sponging out. Men were sent to the small streams of the plain for buckets of water to soak the sponges. The roads from the city were loud with the galloping limbers that brought new ammunition to feed the guns that hammered at the killing ground.
The French infantry sat on the ridges, slicing sausage and bread, drinking the raw, red wine that filled their canteens. The guns were doing their work. Good luck to the guns.
The guns bucked, their wheels jarring from the ground with each shot. As each gun thudded down the gunner ran forward to put his leather-covered thumb over the smoking touch-hole. With the touch-hole covered if was safe to ram the wet sponge down the barrel and kill the last red sparks before the next powder charge was pushed home. Without the touch-hole blocked the rush of air forced by the plunging sponge could flare pockets of unexploded powder that had been known to erupt with enough force to blast the sponge back and impale its handle through the body of a gunner.
The guns had names embossed on the barrels beneath the proudly wreathed ‘N’s. Egalite fired next to Liberte, while Fortune and Defi were being sponged out.
Sharpe’s Honour Page 24